Last weekend saw a two-day benefit for the SF Love Parade and SomArts Cultural Gallery, with a 50-DJ line-up on Friday night alone. Thanks to an unusual confluence of events -- namely, all of SF's real VJs were either otherwise occupied or about to be so* -- I ended up in the closing position in the breaks room on Saturday night.
What I thought was to be an hour-long set bridging between two name VJs turned into four hours supporting Syd Gris and Laird. (Curious fact: Generally, I've worked with industrial/goth DJs, with only a few opportunities -- six, to be exact -- to mix for breaks. Five of those were with Laird.)
Some folks were complimentary, and no one was hostile, so I guess it went OK -- especially given I learned I had the gig exactly 48 hours before I went on. Even worse, Saturday evening my MIDI interface suddenly died (I hope; it's either that or ReAct), leaving me to mix for four hours from keyboard and mouse. And since the time I'd scheduled for preparation instead dissolved in fruitless attempts to revive MIDI, I went with practically no suitable decks.
(This is probably a good place to send a prayer up to the beta gods, 'cause that 2.4 BPM feature would have been really sweet...)
Just to keep things interesting, once Laird started, the bass was so intense it would spontaneously trigger my mouse buttons, thus making any movement across the channel display a little more exciting.
(Still not challenging enough? How about this: The VJ booth was actually some sort of utility table with a textureless white plastic top -- a surface my optical mouse liked only slightly better than, say, a sheet of typing paper. Never having faced such a pristine work area, I arrived pad-less and had to improvise. So as I'm trying to maneuver my cursor around the screen, following a path designed to minimize the possible effect of an unintended 130 mouse clicks per minute, I have to restrict my movements to the dimensions of the cardboard CD jacket I'm using as a pad...)
Giving the raft of technical problems I was having -- I ended up having to run XP restore before I could begin -- I was more than satisfied to get through the evening with only two crashes, only one of which was all that noticeable. (I'm sure the fact that everything was bouncing so vigorously couldn't have helped; I lost count of the number of times I caught the DVD player as it shimmied off the edge of the table, and I finally just left the keyboard on the floor.)
More importantly, though, I finally saw some honest-to-goodness VJs; somehow, after 16 months of doing this, I still hadn't watched someone mix. Unfortunately, after having done so, I don't feel any more enlightened; my style, such as it is, is so radically different from anyone I saw that night, I have absolutely no idea if I suck. Or not.
While there are no glorious gig photos -- probably a good thing -- I did manage to find one with me:
http://mvgals.net/gallery/lpbenefit-012 ... 546?full=1
No, that's not me in the pink wig. Instead, I can be seen in the background, jaw clenched, in bad need of a haircut, holding on for dear life.
And having one hell of a time.
Maz
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* Grant Davis, whom I followed, could only mix early because he was booked on a flight to Torino, where he's performing as part of the Olympic festivities. (Does this mean my c.v. can now say DJ Culture opened for me at the Love Parade benefit?
)
